Re:Distributed Ledgers Part I: Bitcoin is dead
by brighton36 on Saturday August 29, 2015 @11:28AM
(#10140301)
Relative to the drug industry, it represents nearly 100% of online sales. Gambling is significantly less so, though that market is already being serviced to some degree online (unlike drugs). It is likely that gambling will grow if and as the user interfaces and liquidity improves in Bitcoin.
Re:Distributed Ledgers Part I: Bitcoin is dead
by bdcravens on Saturday August 29, 2015 @12:26PM
(#10140511)
What % of total drug sales happen online?
Re:Distributed Ledgers Part I: Bitcoin is dead
by brighton36 on Saturday August 29, 2015 @12:37PM
(#10140540)
Obviously very few. The technical literacy of drug purchasers is fairly low, and the tools are very difficult to use. If your point is that "no one goes online to buy drugs" then you must not understand how adoption curves work, or you must believe that the growth in this market is shrinking.
Re:Distributed Ledgers Part I: Bitcoin is dead
by csomar on Saturday August 29, 2015 @12:41PM
(#10140559)
No it's not. But it can be. The infrastructure can be developed on top of bitcoin (see Silkroad). And failure (silkroad, mtgox...) doesn't mean the end. It actually spawned better services on these domains.
It just takes time until people (or criminals) learn and adopt the technology.
Is bitcoin really huge to those industries? Or are those the biggest industries using bitcoin? A quick search pulls a stat that worldwide gambling revenue is ~350b - is bitcoin really even 1% of that? The US illegal drug market is $151b/year - bitcoin is what percentage of that?
I'm not weighing in on whether bitcoin is flawed or what will happen to it, but the idea that bitcoin is having a meaningful impact on these massive industries at this stage is a little silly.